BLOB data returned in MySQL using AES_DECRYPT with

Question

I'm creating a system in which users can store messages via PHP with a MySQL database, and I am using the MySQL AES_ENCRYPT function to encrypt the contents of these messages.

Here is my posts table:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `posts` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `user` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `group` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `body` varbinary(1000) NOT NULL,
  `ip` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  `date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `replyto` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `replyto` (`replyto`),
  KEY `user` (`user`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=6 ;


ALTER TABLE `posts`
  ADD CONSTRAINT `posts_ibfk_3` FOREIGN KEY (`replyto`) REFERENCES `posts` (`id`) ON DELETE SET NULL ON UPDATE CASCADE,
  ADD CONSTRAINT `posts_ibfk_4` FOREIGN KEY (`user`) REFERENCES `users` (`id`) ON DELETE SET NULL ON UPDATE CASCADE;

And my users table:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `ip` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  `date` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `email` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  `hash` varchar(128) NOT NULL,
  `salt` varchar(32) NOT NULL,
  `guid` varchar(36) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `email` (`email`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=5 ;

The AES encryption key I'm using for the message body is a SHA-512-hashed concatenation between a prefix and suffix string, and the posting user's GUID in the middle. Thus, I have the following SQL query to select the most recent messages:

SELECT AES_DECRYPT(`posts`.`body`, SHA2(CONCAT('prefix',(`users`.`guid`),'suffix'),512)) AS 'realbody'
FROM `posts`
INNER JOIN `users` ON `posts`.`user` = `users`.`id` 
ORDER BY `posts`.`id` DESC

Unfortunately, this does not return the decrypted messages, as you can see in the screenshot:

Instead, I'm getting this BLOB data. However, if I remove the ORDER BY clause from the query:

SELECT AES_DECRYPT(`posts`.`body`, SHA2(CONCAT('prefix',(`users`.`guid`),'suffix'),512)) AS 'realbody'
FROM `posts`
INNER JOIN `users` ON `posts`.`user` = `users`.`id` 

Then suddenly, it works:

I really don't know what could be causing this. Does anybody have any ideas?

Answer 1

UPDATED CAST it to CHAR

SELECT `posts`.*, CAST(AES_DECRYPT(`posts`.`body`,SHA2(CONCAT('prefix',`users`.`guid`,'suffix'),512)) AS CHAR) as 'realbody'
  FROM `posts` JOIN `users` 
    ON `posts`.`user` = `users`.`id`
 ORDER BY `posts`.`id` DESC

Sample output:

 | ID | USER | ... | REALBODY |
 ---...------------------------
 |  2 |    2 | ... |   Post 2 |
 |  1 |    1 | ... |   Post 1 |

Here is SQLFiddle demo